The Butterfly Girl, by Rene Denfeld.
Celia is a 12 year old street kid in Portland, Oregon. She sleeps under a freeway on-ramp with two
other boys, panhandling and turning the occasional trick to get money. (Not much).
She left home because her mother has become a heroin addict thanks to
her new husband, who introduced her to the habit so that he could move in on
Celia: when Celia reported him to the
authorities she was called a liar, so she ran away and joined the homeless kids
on Skid Row, but her only regret is that she left her little sister
behind; Celia knows that Alyssa will
eventually meet the same fate. She is
only six.
Celia
has a single fantasy that sustains her:
her love for the grace and beauty of butterflies, instilled within her
when she was very small by her mother when times were different: Celia stays in the local library for hours
reading about the gorgeous winged creatures, and when life is particularly
ugly, she can lose herself in butterfly dreams.
It’s the only way to survive.
Naomi
is an Investigator of missing children, and has had some success in her
searches – but she cannot find her own sister, left behind as a toddler when
Naomi herself escaped from captivity in a bunker when she was nine years old: her failure to track Sarah down eats at her
soul, for she promised that she would return, return to rescue her – and she
hasn’t. But she still tries, still
relentlessly goes over all the old clues – and meets Celia, the Butterly Girl.
Ms
Denfeld weaves a masterful spell over the reader as she takes us to the story’s
end at a thriller pace; her characters
are all too tragically real, as the vulnerable always are, but hope is there
too, thanks to good people like Ms Denfeld:
she puts her money where her mouth is!
SIX STARS.
